When human cartilage tissue is congenitally deficient or becomes damaged or deficient in the course of lifetime, usually the cartilage tissue is not regenerated. For treating diseases of such human cartilage, a method has been used in which a cartilage tissue is taken from a site of a patient and transplanted into the deficient site of the patient. However, this method has a problem that the donor site is highly damaged and the amounts of the tissue that can be taken are limited. Then, the present inventors have developed a method in which a part of autologous perichondrium-derived chondrogenic cells is collected, cultured ex vivo for expansion and subsequently differentiated into chondrocytes in planar culture by adding a differentiation-inducing factor such as cytokine (Patent Document No. 1 and Non-Patent Document No. 1).
On the other hand, as a means to prepare a three-dimensional cartilage tissue for restoring cartilage tissue, a method is known in which a grafting material is formed by filling a carrier (such as porous, biocompatible scaffold material) with cultured chondrogenic cells or by allowing the cells to adhere to the carrier (Patent Documents Nos. 2-5).